


Kidnapped!

by Annariel



Series: Anomalies of S.H.I.E.L.D. [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/pseuds/Annariel
Summary: Stephen Hart and Clint Barton are both kidnapped and abandoned in a desolate future.  Can the Anomaly team and S.H.I.E.L.D. work together to retrieve them?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fredbassett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/gifts).



> I've had to fudge time-lines so that the first season of Primeval can be assumed to be contemporaneous to the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
> 
> Oh and this is a universe in which no Primeval characters die or vanish into time.
> 
> Thanks to fififolle for beta-reading.

Stephen and Ryan were enjoying a well-deserved lie in when both of their work phones pinged. Stephen groped sleepily on the bedside table, wincing at the clatter of a book dropping onto the floor before he managed to pick up his phone and read the message.

_Time Wind on the loose. Ryan may be a target. Come in straight away._

"Time Wind?" Stephen asked. He was still half asleep and couldn't get any meaning into the words.

Ryan hauled himself upright, peered over Stephen's shoulder, stiffened momentarily and then began a scramble out of bed.

"So it means something to you," Stephen said.

"Do you remember that woman Hawkeye and Black Widow were chasing?"

It all flooded back to Stephen. "You mean the one with the device for opening anomalies, who you apprehended in the Cretaceous."

"Absolutely and I'm almost 100% sure she was the person who set up that anomaly cluster last year when that aeroplane full of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents got involved."

Stephen was already pulling on his clothes as he digested the news and its implications. The Internet had been awash with gossip about the downfall of S.H.I.E.L.D. for the past few weeks. It looked pretty bad, but he hadn't expected it to impact upon their lives particularly.

"So if she has escaped, why do they think you may be a target?"

Ryan shrugged. "I'm guessing because I helped apprehend her. Goodness knows where Hawkeye and Black Widow are, but I'm probably not difficult to track down if you have the kind of resources that S.H.I.E.L.D. has at your disposal."

"Does she?"

"Someone took down S.H.I.E.L.D and has presumably released half their prisoners, so yes, we should assume so."

 _On our way in_ Stephen texted back to the ARC.

His jacket was hanging from the bedroom door and he pulled it on. As he reached the front door Ryan was already in his coat and loading keys and loose change into his pockets.

When they opened the door several things happened at once. Stephen registered something in his peripheral vision, just in time to realise there was a man standing there. Then there was a sudden pain and the hum of electricity. He heard Ryan calling his name but he was already sinking into unconsciousness. He was vaguely aware of someone carrying him away from the house, but also of the sound of shouting and fighting behind him somewhere, then the fog of oblivion enveloped him.

When he came around he was in darkness. There was a sharp taste of dust and oil in the air, and an edge of something that suggested chemicals. Stephen almost immediately starting coughing.

"How are you doing?" asked a voice.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Stephen asked between coughs.

"Clint Barton, generally better known as Hawkeye. As for where we are, beats me."

Stephen managed to scramble into a sitting position and he stayed there for a moment or two catching his breath and letting the world spin and settle a bit.

"What happened?"

"Not entirely sure. About a dozen men got the drop on me. They were well-prepared and well-trained so I'm guessing that they were Hydra agents from within S.H.I.E.L.D. After that, nothing until I woke up here."

There was a click and a torch came on. Stephen watched as Hawkeye shone it around to reveal that they were in a grimy room with metal walls and a heavy looking door. A few empty shelves were scattered around the room.

"I assume we're locked in," Stephen said.

Hawkeye shook his head. "Na, I checked the door, but thought I wouldn't go exploring until you regained consciousness. Too many unknowns."

"But whoever it was left us a torch."

"No, again. Whoever it was didn't bother to search us or remove any of our belongings. I've got half a dozen knives, a pistol, a Swiss army knife and a half-eaten chocolate bar on my person. In some ways that is more alarming than if they had taken everything and locked us in somewhere."

Stephen felt in his pockets and unearthed phone and keys. He switched on the phone but there was no signal. He let the implications of that set in.

"So, wherever we are, they didn't think we would be able to escape even if we were armed?"

Hawkeye nodded grimly. "How are you doing?"

Stephen struggled to his feet. "I'm all right, I think. They hit me with some kind of taser rather than a cosh. I don't feel particularly sick or anything."

Hawkeye nodded, standing up himself. "Time to go then. I'm guessing, since you are one of the victims, that this was Time Wind."

"You didn't get a warning?"

Hawkeye laughed harshly. "I was warned that the entire complement of the Fridge had escaped. That left me with a big choice of enemies. If it was Time Wind however, then I suppose we should be asking ourselves when as well as where."

"Comforting thought."

"Very. Shall we open the door and investigate?"

"No time like the present."

* * *

"I was standing right here and I saw them open an anomaly and carry Stephen through it. I was right here!" Ryan knew he was letting his frustration show as he stood on the corner of their normally quiet suburban street. A mixture of Anomaly team personnel and other security services were finger-tip searching his house and the surrounding streets, but Ryan didn't have much hope that they would find anything useful. It had been an extremely efficient snatch and grab, all the more so because they had got away through an anomaly that had promptly closed behind them.

Connor sat next to Ryan on a low wall, typing frantically on his laptop.

"Bingo!" he murmured under his breath.

"Bingo what?"

"Do you remember Leo Fitz from that time we met those S.H.I.E.L.D agents?"

"The Scottish one? Vaguely, yes."

"Well he and I have been working on some theories about anomalies. In particular how we can identify the far end of an anomaly from the energy signal. There's just enough residual energy here that I've managed to get a fix."

"Right? And?"

"Oh," Connor said uncertainly.

"That doesn't sound like a good `Oh'," Ryan remarked.

"Well it might be a good `oh' but it could be a bad `oh'. Umm... what kind of 'oh' would you like it to be?"

"Just tell me what is going on."

"They're in the future. The anomaly leads to the future."

Ryan felt a glimmer of hope. "That's good, right? There will be people and civilisation there, won't there?"

"I'm not sure. That predator thing that Helen brought back that nearly killed you? That came from the future, didn't it."

"How far in the future?"

"A few thousand years, I mean in geological terms it's nothing, but you know," Connor shrugged. "Global warming, nuclear war, who knows?"

Ryan took a deep breath. "So we know when Stephen is. How does that fucking help?"

Connor looked at him nervously and Ryan regretted snapping. Stephen was Connor's friend as well as Ryan's lover.

"Sorry, carry on. What next?"

"I've emailed Fitz to see if we can get hold of that device they appropriated. You know, the one that opens anomalies? Fitz has a lot of ideas about its operation."

"I'd guess Time Wind built it in the first place."

"Possibly, anyway Fitz is going to try to get here."

"Wait, hasn't S.H.I.E.L.D. just gone belly-up? Isn't your friend Fitz on some kind of wanted list?"

Connor winced, "Well that's one of the difficulties. Lester is on it."

Ryan resisted the temptation to scream and settled for glaring at the patch of street where he had last seen Stephen.

* * *

The door led them down a short tunnel to a ladder bolted into the wall. Clint opted to go up first, claiming to like heights. Stephen decided not to argue with him. There was a bolted down cover at the top. Clint turned the ageing locking mechanism. It creaked in protest but moved slowly until the whole thing unlocked with a clunk. Clint pushed upwards. A hot wind brought sand down into the hole.

"At least it's daylight out there," Clint remarked.

He hauled himself out of the hole and Stephen quickly followed. They found themselves in a desolate landscape. The strange oily smell in the air was more noticeable. Stephen sniffed uncertainly and felt something chemical catch in the back of his throat making him cough.

"Pretty bad case of pollution here," Clint said. He was looking serious.

Sand and rocks stretched as far as the eye could see, which wasn't that far thanks to a roiling dust storm on the horizon.

"Any idea where we are?" Stephen asked.

"Not a dicky-bird. We might be able to make an educated guess once the stars come out."

Stephen sniffed again. "If that's pollution in the air then we must be near a city, I suppose," he said doubtfully. "Maybe somewhere in China, assuming it's still the twenty-first century?"

A flicker of movement in the rocks caught his eye. He tapped Clint on the shoulder and gestured surreptitiously. Clint turned slowly. Nothing moved. They both held steady for a moment and then something started towards them in a blur so fast it was difficult for the eye to track it. Moments later Stephen's brain caught up with what was going on.

"Shoot it!" he shouted.

Clint didn't hesitate. Stephen didn't even see him pull the gun but he heard the rapid fire of the clip emptying. Then a predator was upon them. Clint had a knife in his hand and was stabbing up, even as it bore him to the ground. Now he could see something, Stephen snatched up the torch Clint had dropped and whacked the creature's skull with it. There was a trail of blood leading up to the fighting pair so it seemed as if at least some of Clint's bullets had struck true. The predator gurgled and then suddenly collapsed. Frantically Stephen pulled it away from the fallen Avenger. Hawkeye was covered in blood but his eyes were open.

"Tell me most of that belongs to the predator," Stephen said.

"Most of this blood belongs to the predator," Clint croaked.

Stephen reached out to pull the other man to his feet. Clint grasped his hand and then winced. "Well, at least some of the blood belongs to the creature."

Now he was looking, Stephen could see long rents in Clint's uniform and deep wounds beneath them.

"We need to get back down that hole. If there are any more of those about, the smell of blood will attract them."

Clint gasped and leaned heavily against Stephen. "I think I may need some help."

* * *

Lester met Leo Fitz off the commercial flight he had taken from Philadelphia. Lester wasn't entirely surprised to find Agent Coulson was accompanying him.

"We will look after him," Lester said.

"I'm sure you would, but I can't afford to lose him," Agent Coulson said.

Lester nodded. If it hadn't been for Fitz and Connor's private channels of communication he would have had no idea that S.H.I.E.L.D were still active in any form at all, let alone had the ability to contact them.

"We're not far from where the anomaly opened. I have a car available."

Coulson nodded calmly. Agent Fitz, Lester observed, appeared distracted and clutched his duffle bag closely to him but said nothing.

The drive to the little street on which Stephen and Ryan lived passed in an uncomfortable silence. This was broken when they pulled up. The police had helpfully cordoned off the road and were watching Ryan and his team with undisguised interest. Connor, who had been sitting on a wall surrounded by equipment leaped to his feet as their car pulled through the cordon. He enveloped Fitz in a quick hug as he stepped out of the car which, Lester noticed, Fitz endured rather than returned.

"Come and look at the readings! See if you agree with me. The polarity is definitely the reverse of normal so I'm positing that the anomaly leads to the future not the past!!"

Connor dragged Fitz over to an open laptop and gestured at the screen. Fitz opened his mouth, closed it again, took a deep breath and then manage to stutter out a short sentence of agreement. Connor paused mid-flow and frowned at Fitz.

"Still recovering, you know, from the injury," Fitz managed to stutter.

Connor frowned but, to his credit, carried on with the excitement dialled down a notch. Lester looked at Coulson.

"He'll be fine," Coulson said.

Ryan walked over and shook Coulson's hand. "It's good to see you again, Agent. Your help is much appreciated. I understand this puts you at considerable risk."

Coulson nodded. "Sometimes," he started and then stopped almost as if embarrassed by his own sentiment. "I hope we get your partner back, Captain Ryan. Sometimes there are too many secrets and I'd like to preserve at least someone's attempt at normality."

Lester raised an eyebrow at Ryan from behind Coulson. He had a suspicion there was a story there that Agent Coulson wasn't telling them. Still, whatever his motives, Lester fully appreciated the favour that was being done.

"Ready?" Connor shouted.

"Right, form up!" Ryan said to his team.

Fitz nodded at Connor. They had placed the anomaly creation device in the centre of the pavement, just where Ryan had said the anomaly through which Stephen was taken had appeared. Fitz pressed the button and then took several hasty steps backwards. Everyone held their breath for a moment. As if on cue, an anomaly unfurled.

Before anyone could do anything the anomaly gave the characteristic pulse indicating an incursion. Several rifles swung up to the ready. Then two men staggered through. One was Stephen and he was supporting what appeared to be a badly wounded Clint Barton.

"I've stopped the bleeding as best I can," Stephen said without pre-amble. "But we're going to need paramedics."

Ditzy was already running forwards with the team's first aid kit, as Stephen sank to his knees and lowered Hawkeye to the ground. Hawkeye's eyes flickered and his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Phil?" he said doubtfully. "Am I dead then?"

There was a moment's silence as everyone slowly turned to follow Hawkeye's gaze to find themselves looking at Agent Coulson.

"No, I," Coulson said awkwardly and took a step towards Clint.

"You bastard," Clint said, closing his eyes. "You've been alive this whole fucking time."

Coulson knelt down next to Hawkeye and Stephen rapidly shuffled out of the way to give him space. After a second Coulson took hold of Hawkeye's hand. Ditzy let him keep hold of it as he checked Stephen's make-shift bandages.

"It wasn't my choice, believe me, Clint."

Clint nodded. "I believe you. Just as long as I've got you back now."

"He'll live," Ditzy reported as Coulson bent down for a kiss.


End file.
